


forgotten and reinvented

by bayloriffic



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-21
Updated: 2013-01-21
Packaged: 2017-11-26 09:15:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/648999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bayloriffic/pseuds/bayloriffic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Her talisman,</em> Belle remembers him saying, and her fingers keep tracing the pieces, over and over and over again, until her breath slows down and her heart stops racing.</p><p>Set immediately after "In the Name of the Brother" (2x12), so contains major spoilers for that episode.</p>
            </blockquote>





	forgotten and reinvented

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from ["Saying Your Names"](http://yupnet.org/siken/2008/03/19/saying-your-names/) by Richard Siken

No one cleans up the cup. 

The man, the one who won’t leave her alone ( _Mr. Gold, they tell her; he’s Mr. Gold and she’s Belle, but she doesn’t remember any of this, doesn’t remember anything at all_ ) leaves. But the cup stays on the floor, shattered into pieces. 

Someone will have to clean it up eventually, she knows. She can’t remember who she is, or where she is, or even exactly what happened to her, but she’s fairly sure hospitals get cleaned pretty regularly. 

So Belle just turns away, her back to the broken china, and closes her eyes, hoping that when she wakes up, everything will make sense and the cup will be gone.

*

When she wakes up, the room is silent and dark, and the cup is still there. She can see the shiny white shards glinting softly, catching the light that trickles in from the hallway.

She considers calling for a nurse, begging someone to come take it away, but instead she just gets out of bed, walking cautiously over to the shattered mess. The floor is cold and hard beneath her bare feet, and she kneels softly next to the white and blue shards.

It’s completely destroyed, smashed into so many tiny pieces that she doesn’t think it will ever be able to be put together again.

The china is incredibly delicate, and she takes her time picking up all the pieces, holding them gently in the palm of her hand, careful not to cut herself or damage the fragments even further.

*

She keeps the pieces in the small table next to her hospital bed, tucked away in the back of the drawer. She’s not sure why. She tries not to think of it as a talisman, as something more than it is. It’s just a cup.

Dr. Whale comes in a couple of times a day, so do the nurses. They speak calmly and slowly to her, like she’s a child. They tell her that her name is Belle, that she had an accident. 

No one can tell her if she’s ever going to remember again or even how she should go about trying.

Mr. Gold hasn’t come back. She thinks maybe he never will. 

She should be relieved about that, but instead she just feels kind of sick to her stomach, cold and empty and alone.

*

Sometimes she dreams about a faraway land, full of fire-breathing monsters and castles, sword-fights and princesses.

Once, she dreams of a man with rough, shimmering skin and gold dragon eyes. He looks familiar somehow and when he takes her in his arms, he feels like home, like everything she’s forgotten but is trying to find again.

She wakes up in tears, her breathing ragged and her heart racing. It’s not until she opens the drawer, touches the cool, delicate china with her finger that she calms back down enough to fall asleep again.

*

She gets into the habit of trying to piece it back together. 

When she’s alone, she pulls the little wheeled tray over her bed, laying the fragments on the fake wood surface. It makes her feel better, somehow, putting the damaged pieces back together, making it whole again.

One night, she falls asleep like that, the cup half-built on the table in front of her, and when she wakes up, there’s a nurse next to her bed, sweeping the pieces into a small trash can.

Belle screams and yanks the bin away from the woman, digging through it for the pieces. The nurse gives her a horrified look and turns from the room, calling for the doctor as she goes.

By the time the nurse comes back with Dr. Whale, Belle’s managed to find all of the pieces and she’s holding them protectively, her hands closed tight around the fragments 

“She’s trying to take this from me,” she tells him desperately, clutching the pieces to her. She can feel a couple of cuts on her hands, tiny slices that sting and burn, but she keeps her fists clenched tight, refusing to let go.

Dr. Whale walks towards her slowly, hands held up in a non-threatening gesture, like he’s approaching a madwoman. When he gets close enough, he looks at what she’s holding, squinting at the blue and white shards. “What is that?”

“It’s a cup,” she says.

“It’s broken.”

“I know,” she says, forcing herself to relax, to calm down and speak rationally. “But I...” she trails off helplessly, not really sure what she wants. Only that she knows that she doesn’t want them to take it from her, to throw it away like it’s nothing, like it’s trash.

Dr. Whale is watching at her, so is the nurse, both of them looking at her like she’s crazy. It makes her want to scream.

But instead she just takes a deep breath and looks Dr. Whale in the eye, says, “I...I think I may want to fix it.”

*

They let her keep the cup. 

Dr. Whale overrules the nurse, his eyes full of a kind of damaged compassion, and tells her that she should be careful when she handles it, make sure not to cut herself again.

Belle nods, relieved, and places the cup back into the drawer. She waits until she’s alone before she takes it out, touching each sliver gently, tracing her fingertips over the ragged patterns of the edges, the delicate blue markings that decorate some of the pieces.

 _Her talisman,_ she remembers him saying, and her fingers keep moving over the destroyed shards, over and over and over again, until her breath slows down and her heart stops racing.

*

She’s still got the smashed cup with her when they finally discharge her, the pieces tucked safely away in her jacket pocket when Deputy Nolan escorts her out of the hospital.

As she steps outside for the first time in days, she blinks into the harsh daylight and runs her fingers over the smooth, cool surface of one of the shards. She can tell which piece it is, just from touch. 

One edge is smoother than the others – a brightly polished gold, she knows – and one edge is a little more jagged than the others, a break that happened long ago, one she’s starting to believe she’ll never, ever remember.

* 

She lives alone, in a neat, cramped apartment above the town library. 

The cup sits on her bedside table, no longer tucked away in a drawer, but no more whole than the day she smashed it against the wall.

Even though she tries everyday, she’s never managed to fit all of the pieces together, a few of the shards stubborn in their inability to make sense with the rest of them.

It’s a puzzle that she can’t quite work out, but she doesn’t give up trying, somehow knowing that if she keeps fighting at it, she’ll figure it out.

*

She’s on her way to breakfast at Granny’s one morning when she sees him, limping briskly in his dark suit, gold-handled cane gleaming in the early morning sunlight. 

He’s walking straight towards her, but his head is bowed and he doesn’t see her until they’re almost on top of each other.

Mr. Gold jerks to a halt, stumbling a little as he does. Without thinking about it, Belle reaches out to steady him, one hand reaching out for his. His skin is warm under her fingers and her heart feels suddenly strange, like it’s not beating right.

They stand like that for a moment, and he studies her, searching her face for something she doesn't understand. They're still touching, almost holding hands, and Belle resists the urge to pull away from him, to run and never look back.

“Thank you, Belle,” he finally says, his voice low and quiet and sad as he takes his hand from hers.

She wants to tell him about the cup – that she still has it, that she can’t seem to let it go – but she doesn’t say anything at all, and then he’s moving again, walking away from her as she stands on the sidewalk outside of the diner, her heart still stuttering in her chest.

*

That night, after she locks up the library and heads upstairs, Belle begins working on the cup in earnest, fitting the fragments together in a new pattern, one that seems to be right, the pieces coming together in a way they never have before.

She’s careful to make sure it’s going to work before she gets the tube of glue that she keeps for just this purpose, doesn't want to risk doing anything to it that can't be undone.

But it works, the puzzle finally coming together, and she stays up almost until dawn working on it, putting it back together until it looks just as it did when Mr. Gold handed it to her that first day, only one small chip missing from the rim.

*

It still takes her a couple of days after that before she decides what she’s going to do with it, and then a couple more before she screws up her courage enough to actually do it.

But finally, one morning, she steels herself and tucks the cup into her jacket pocket, making her way determinedly down the block to the pawn shop. When she opens the door, a little bell jangles, and Mr. Gold looks up quickly from where he’s working behind the counter.

“Belle?” he says, his face so open and hopeful and vulnerable that she has to look away.

“I don’t remember,” she says quickly and his face falls.

He looks down at the glass counter in front of him, his hands gripping the edges hard enough that she can see the white of his knuckles through his skin, and when he glances back up at her, he looks different, his face harsher somehow, his eyes colder. “Well, dearie. What can I help you with then? Here to make a deal?” 

Belle bites on her lip and pulls the cup out of her pocket, placing it gently on the counter in front of him. She feels strange letting it go, giving up the one thing that’s kept her anchored over the past couple of weeks, but it’s not hers to keep, she knows. 

“Um,” she says, feeling silly that she’s making such a big deal out of this. It’s just a cup, after all. “I fixed it for you.”

He doesn’t say anything, just reaches out and runs his fingertip along the edge, his eyes closing for a moment when he gets to the chip. Even in the dim light of the shop, Belle can see all the imperfections, the places where the glue ridges away from the porcelain, the fine spiderweb of cracks that still mar the blue and white surface.

“It’s still a little cracked,” she tells him nervously. “But you can hardly see it.”

When he looks back up at her, his eyes are warm and bright again, and her heart starts doing that stuttering thing again.

“Oh Belle,” he says, so quiet she almost doesn’t hear him. “You kept it.”

“Yeah,” she says, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and feeling a little ridiculous. All of this over a cup. “It...it made me feel better somehow.”

He’s still just looking at her, and Belle feels suddenly like she might cry, that empty feeling in her chest getting worse. “So, uh,” she says. “I’m going to go, okay?”

She’s already halfway to the door, when he calls her name, and when she turns around he’s almost right behind her, the cup held delicately in one hand. “You should keep it,” he tells her, holding it back out to her. “If it helps you, I mean.”

“It does,” she says with a rueful laugh. “I don’t know why or how, but. It just...it does help.”

“Then here,” he says, taking another step towards her, cautiously, like he’s scared she might run, like she might scream at him again, push him away and tell him to leave her alone. “It’s yours.”

“No,” she says. “I can’t. I know it’s important to you. Your face, when I broke it...” she trails off, feeling terrible, thinking of how he looked at her that day, lost and heartbroken over a cup. “I can’t.”

“Please,” he says pleadingly. “Please, Belle.” And he looks so desperate, like this matters more to him than anything else in the world, that she doesn't bother arguing about it anymore. Besides, she really does want it back, wants to hold it in her hands, keep it beside her so that it's there when she needs it.

“Thank you,” she says, taking the teacup from him. And then, for reasons she can’t quite explain – maybe to thank him, maybe to apologize – Belle leans over and gives him an impulsive kiss, just a chaste brush of her lips against his. 

For a second, he doesn’t move, his body frozen next to hers, but then his mouth twitches against hers, warm and real, and it’s like she can’t breathe, like she can’t move, as everything clicks into place, memories flooding her mind and her heart and her body, overwhelming her until she lets out a quiet sob, clutching Rumpelstiltskin against her, holding onto him to stop herself from falling.

“Belle?” he says. “Belle?”

“I remember,” she whispers, her face buried in his neck, inhaling the familiar scent of him, sandalwood and magic, one hand pressed against his back, her chipped cup held tightly in the other, and Belle knows that she’s never going to be able to let go of either one of them ever again.


End file.
